I binged her recent Albania/Montenegro series yesterday.
The one thing that really struck me when watching her videos in quick succession was just how… transactional her relationship with the people she meets in hostels are.
In one video she’d be like “Hey! I’m here on the beach with Bill, Bob and Betty!” with little to no context about who these people are, only for Bill, Bob and Betty to completely vanish before the end of the video.
There was one guy who stuck around for two stops on the trip (he was the most attractive one from an initial group of people in the previous city) but he also vanished with little to no fanfare. At one point, she went to introduce a man she was hiking with and she forgot his name and kept the footage in the video! The whole thing was made particularly jarring when her real life friend Karen joined her at the end of the trip and she was given a starring role, in comparisons to the ‘nobodies’ in the other videos.
I’ve stayed in hostels all over the world and am not naive - I’m not expecting her to become BFFs with everyone she shares a bunkbed with. However, I can’t help but wonder if these poor people feel like they’re being used for content. Because, ultimately, that’s what Christianne is after.